Cook Local, Eat Global

I am not always one for fusion dishes. Quite a few of them come across as less fusion and more like confusion, with muddled flavors and odd combinations of unrelated ingredients. t But, as I was planting my Thai basil this spring, right next to a planter full of Italian and Greek basil, I thought, […]

I realized last night when I was thinking about French cuisine, that I remembered only one actual recipe, probably because I made it more than once, and that was Boeuf Bourguignon. Now, I am not counting the recipes for sauces: bechamel, veloute, brun, demi-glace, tomato, and hollandaise along with many of their derivatives, are indelibly […]

You know, I had forgotten how good French food is. This is because once I got out of culinary school, I can count on one hand how many times I have made French dishes. Oh, yes, I use French technique every day that I enter the kitchen, either at home or in a restaurant, but […]

Every ingredient to this particular dish was local: the beans, the onions, garlic, carrots, celery, leeks, mushrooms, rosemary, thyme, sage and oh, yeah, the rabbit. Oh, wait a minute: the white wine isn’t from Athens, but it is from Ohio, and the salt–well, it is from the ocean, which is not local to Ohio. At […]

On Sunday, I had a powerful desire for rice and lamb stuffed grape leaves–dolmathes, (or dolmades) as they say in Greek, or dolma in Turkish. Actually, dolma is just a general name for stuffed leaves, fruits or vegetables, stuffed grape leaves are more properly called yaprak dolma. And I wanted them home-made, none of those […]